“This group doesn’t really have a name—well, at least not one I can tell you. Just know that it’s all legitimate military activity.” Hawk paused. “And I have a much larger budget.”
Jaziri grinned and pick up his cup again. “Now that’s what I like to hear. So what do you need?”
“Do you still have that cousin herding goats outside of Rawanduz?”
“Kejal? Yes, he’s still there. But I must warn you he’s not as friendly to Western ideals as I am.”
Hawk leaned forward. “Does he like money?”
“Oh, very much.”
“Then he’s friendly enough to the Western ideals required of him.”
“So, what does this mission entail?”
Hawk wagged his finger at Jaziri. “You remember the rules. The less you know, the better. Besides, it’s benign, and Kejal will never be in danger as long as he keeps his mouth shut. Do you think he can do that?”
Jaziri nodded.
“When can you take me?” Hawk asked.
“Give me fifteen minutes, and I’ll need to call Kejal.”
“Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”
***
THE ZAGROS MOUNTAINS in the northeastern corner of Iraq conjured up mixed emotions for Hawk. It was in that rocky landscape that he had his initial epiphany that he didn’t want to serve in the military ever again. While his first trip to the mountains had ended triumphantly in the safe return of an innocent civilian, his second trip made him quit the military and wonder how he ever pledged allegiance to the U.S. flag. Yet there he was on another mission. And if it were to be successful, he needed to once again suppress the memories that haunted him.
The three-hour ride from Kirkuk to Rawanduz proved to be uneventful despite the half dozen security checkpoints. Though the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, more commonly known as ISIS, had a presence in the region, they didn’t have enough forces to control the Kurdish strongholds in the mountains. The Kurds were resilient people, if nothing else, especially the ones who dominated the Zagros Mountain region. And they’d held strong against both militant radicalism and militant attacks. The checkpoints, constructed by building deep trenches to prevent car bombs and other border-crashing means, created a sense of safety in the region. Though where Hawk was about to roam, he’d only have himself—and his weapons—to rely upon for his safety.
Jaziri’s truck rumbled up a winding road, ascending into one of the most scenic places in the country. The ancient art of goat herding dominated the region despite the relatively new innovation of terrace farming that had crept in over the past few years. Aside from the few modern homes dotting the hillsides, Hawk couldn’t imagine the place had changed much in the past several thousand years.
After another thirty minutes of ascending the hill, they eventually reached the top and parked next to Kejal’s dirt bike. Jaziri made a call, and five minutes later, Kejal shuffled toward them with his staff in hand, followed by several dozen goats.
“Before you go,” Jaziri said as he started to get out of the truck, “do you have a way out?”
Hawk winked at him. “I always have a way out.”
Kejal hadn’t reached the truck before he began squawking at Jaziri, gesturing toward Hawk and spitting.
“What is it?” Hawk said, hoping for Jaziri to translate.
“He said he didn’t know you were an American,” Jaziri said.
“Tell him I just want to walk the hills with him, not teach him the words to ‘Born in the USA’.”
Jaziri flashed a grin. “He actually likes that song. He’s a big Bruce Springsteen fan.”
Hawk shrugged. “If I were to teach him the words to any song, it’d be ‘Thriller’. And then he’d learn the dance.”
“Oh, the Michael Jackson song. I love that one,“ Jaziri said, lifting his hands in the air to mimic the iconic dance.
“Whatever it takes to get him to agree to this.” Hawk fished a few hundred dollar bills out of his pocket. “Maybe this will help, too.” He waved the money in front of Kejal, whose frown vanished.
Kejal then broke into a smile and walked toward Hawk and put his arm around him.
Hawk looked over his shoulder at Jaziri. “Does he know I don’t understand the Sorani dialect? I only know Kurmanji.”
Jaziri laughed and waved dismissively. “You’ll figure it out.” He turned and walked back toward his truck before driving away.
For the next hour, Hawk trekked the hills with Kejal. Hawk wasn’t surprised that a man who spent his entire work week herding goats would be so talkative. Despite their difference in dialects, Hawk understood the gist of Kejal’s long-winded stories. Kejal once served for Saddam Hussein in the Iraqi National Guard, a fact he was proud of. Since it was disbanded, he’d returned to his family’s business of herding goats but had used his military training on several occasions. Kejal related a story of how he once disarmed an ISIS militant while making a routine visit to his bank in Rawanduz. It sounded somewhat fanciful to Hawk, who wasn’t sure if either he didn’t quite understand the dialect as much as he thought he did, or if Kejal was simply engaging in the time-honored tradition of embellishment. Language barrier aside, Hawk won over Kejal by following social cues, laughing when he laughed and giving a look of empathy when he looked pained. It was critical to gain Kejal’s trust.
When Kejal finished telling his latest story, Hawk asked if Kejal minded if Hawk walked across the terrace and check out the other side of the mountain. Kejal agreed but told Hawk he’d have to go alone since the terrain was too dangerous for the goats.
Perfect.
Hawk hiked toward the edge and identified the coordinates from the note he’d found between Karif Fazil and Moradi. He pulled out his binoculars and studied the compound located atop another terrace. Strategically, Fazil couldn’t have picked a better location in the area. Several nearby caves could provide cover—or entrapment—during an attack. There were several ways to get up to the compound, but all of them required four-wheel drive vehicles to navigate the steep embankment.
While Moradi might have had something personal against Fazil, he would’ve never been able to mount any type of retribution against him there. Moradi’s specialty was IEDs, not hand-held missile launchers. The only viable way to attack the compound would be through the air. But Hawk had time. The most important element of his overall mission was to eliminate Nasim Ghazi. Without Ghazi in the picture, Al Hasib wouldn’t be able to generate the type of devastation their weapons expert had wreaked on U.S. interests over the past few months. But was Ghazi even there?
Hawk glanced back over his shoulder toward Kejal and waved. Kejal smiled and waved back.
Peering through binoculars, Hawk saw something that made him sick to his stomach. Peeling his eyes away, he looked off in the distance and strained to hear a faint noise. He looked through the binoculars again and focused them.
And then all at once his worst fear was confirmed as he looked skyward.
CHAPTER 8
KARIF FAZIL STROKED his pet pigeon, Jafar, which stood perched on his shoulder, and looked out over the canyon below. He felt like a king surveying his dominion. In the distance, waterfalls gushed forth into the canyon. Birds soared overhead. The slight breeze easing across the deck of the residence quarters atop his compound was the only sound—other than that of the voice nagging him non-stop in his head.
Attaining the kind of power he wielded wasn’t accomplished through polite diplomacy. It was something he had to want—something he had to take. And more often than not, it required ruthless action to acquire it. People in the west talked about burning bridges as if such an act were a bad thing. For Fazil, it was necessary to keep his enemies from coming after him.
He grabbed a pinch of grain from his seed bag and held it out for Jafar. The pigeon vigorously pecked at it, snatching up one grain at a time with its beak.
“Good girl,” Fazil said as he rubbed Jafar’s head with his index finger.
Fazil was
waiting on a shipment of IEDs. He’d struck a deal with a middleman, a local opium supplier, who was instructed to purchase a large cache of IEDs from Rasul Moradi. If it weren’t for the fact that he got caught having his way with Moradi’s younger sister, Fazil would have worked directly with Moradi and avoided the markup. But Fazil could afford the extra cost, especially since it also offered the added protection of making the transaction more difficult to track for the local Iraqi authorities who refused to take one of his generous bribes.
The IEDs would be deployed to distract people from the real target. As a student of war theories, Fazil had become enamored with Germany’s Schlieffen Plan from World War I. Had it been executed properly, many German generals believed it would have led to German success in the war. Fazil concluded that creating two war fronts as the aggressor was a blueprint for success rather than defending two fronts. He wanted to dictate the terms to his enemies, something he was gearing up to do in two days.
The real target—the front Fazil was more interested in fighting—would get hit when no one suspected it. While every security force would be concerned with a rash of IEDs, they wouldn’t be expecting the sucker punch he’d deliver. And he couldn’t wait to take his swing.
“In two days, Jafar, the world will know about Al Hasib,” Fazil said as he stroked his bird again. “Everyone will take note of who we are and what our objectives are.”
Fazil would’ve never dreamed that he would be standing at this precipice—the leader of an international organization committed to overseeing the destruction of Western interests and ideals in the Middle East. If he was honest, he was as an unlikely candidate as anyone could imagine. He’d been educated in the west at the University of California at Berkley University, studying economics. Before he left for the United States to study there, he always defended American policies with his more militant friends. “Just because we don’t agree with American values doesn’t mean it doesn’t operate as one of the most efficient governments in the world,” he told his friends when they questioned his loyalty to their country. “We can take the good and leave the bad.”
But Fazil never considered joining the cause of what he considered mad men until that day—that one fateful day.
Fazil received the message on his voicemail that his father had been killed. And though it wasn’t quite as painful as watching his mother die as she gave birth to his younger brother, it was far more gut wrenching. Fazil’s father was a local farmer who never had any interest in affiliating with the Taliban or any other terrorist group. But a raid by U.S. Marines resulted in his death. They believed several high-level Taliban leaders were hiding out at a local seed store when Fazil’s father was there. He was collateral damage, at least according to the final official report issued by the U.S. military. Their apologies and generous check couldn’t bring back Fazil’s father. So, Fazil took the money and created his own terrorist cell. He was going to strike back at U.S. interests—and hopefully kill a few U.S. citizens along the way. By hitting key targets and developing a marketing team that could’ve earned him millions the honest way, Fazil put Al Hasib on the map.
“That’s right, Jafar, we’re going to make them pay a thousand times over for what they’ve done,” he said as he leaned against the deck rail. “A thousand times over.”
Fazil’s assistant rushed through the door and handed him the phone. “You need to take this.”
Fazil answered the phone. “Yes?”
“Everything is in place.”
“Excellent. Just wait for my command.”
“How soon do you think we’ll act? A day or two?”
“Be ready to go within twenty-four hours. I’m ready to hit them even harder.”
Fazil hung up and smiled.
Whoever says vengeance isn’t sweet must’ve never gotten revenge.
He took a deep breath, soaking in the fresh mountain air. He closed his eyes and turned his face toward the sun. It was almost perfect.
Then his peaceful moment was interrupted by a distinct sound, a sound he knew all too well.
He rushed inside and grabbed his binoculars before scanning the horizon.
Fazil gasped and rushed inside. “Drones! Drones!”
He raced down the stairwell, continuing to yell to his fellow warriors.
Less than a minute later, the Al Hasib complex exploded as a pair of drones rained down missiles on it.
CHAPTER 9
SENATOR BLUNT STOOD as he watched the grainy images from the drone’s camera while the missile zeroed in on its target. It appeared headed straight for home perched atop a scenic apex in the Zagros Mountains. He would’ve preferred to witness the destruction of Al Hasib’s leader in person, but Firestorm’s secret operational command center would have to suffice.
As the drone zoomed closer, Blunt could make out the figures of people sprinting for cover. Then a flash of white and the screen went dark.
Blunt jammed his unlit cigar into his mouth and chewed on it for a few seconds.
“Did we get them all?” Blunt asked.
“Waiting for satellite imagery to confirm, sir,” answered one of the officers.
The screen blinked, and a new image appeared. “Can you get me infrared?”
“Gimme just a second,” the officer said.
When the infrared image popped up, the cigar nearly fell out of Blunt’s mouth, which broke out into a wide grin. “It looks like we got every last one of those cockroaches.”
He pumped his fist and sat down in his chair. “We need to spread the news about this. We shouldn’t have any problems maintaining funding now.”
“Sir, I’d hold off on that until we get confirmation on the ground. We don’t know that Fazil was there for sure.”
Blunt leaned back and waved off the officer dismissively. “Screw it. There’s no way they survived that blast.”
The officer sighed. “With all due respect, sir, if we didn’t get him, everything you’ve worked for would be gone, and the budget committee would have all the ammunition they’d need to shut us down.”
Blunt took a deep breath and slumped his shoulders. “You’re probably right. But I want this confirmed on the ground ASAP.”
He exited the command center, almost skipping. He wanted some fresh air and a few minutes to soak in his victory.
No better way to start your morning than killing a few dozen terrorists and securing funding for your black ops division.
He ducked into a nearby coffee shop and bought a large mocha before returning to his office.
His momentary giddiness vanished when Preston walked into his office with a grim look on his face.
“What’s the matter?” Blunt asked. “Did you not get to Madeline Meissner in time?”
Preston shook his head. “We’ve got far bigger problems than her.”
Blunt’s eyes widened. “What could be worse than her?”
“For starters, an emboldened Al Hasib.”
“What? We just blasted those fools back into the fifth century.”
“Apparently, your drone strike didn’t get them all, as they took to social media in the aftermath of the attack, bragging about how only a few of their fighters were killed and the majority of the casualties were civilians—and that they have a big surprise attack coming very soon against U.S. interests.”
“That’s just terrorist bravado. I saw several of their men running for cover when we destroyed their compound in the Zagros Mountains.”
“Bravado or not, it’s already got Guy Hirschbeck fired up.” Preston handed his phone to his boss.
Blunt quickly scrolled through a story that had hit major news media websites with quotes from Hirschbeck about how the U.S. policy in dealing with Middle Eastern terrorists was only proving to exacerbate the problem by creating more terrorists.
He read Hirschbeck’s quote aloud: “Every time we strike terrorists with drones and fail, taking the lives of innocent civilians, we incite more hatred for our country, spawning a new generatio
n of people who will stop at nothing to see the downfall of this great nation.”
He handed Preston his phone back. “This ought to make our next budget meeting very interesting.”
“Well, with all due respect, sir, wasn’t the point of Firestorm to reduce the number of drone attacks so what he’s talking about doesn’t happen?” Preston asked.
Blunt nodded. “The key word there is reduce. Drones can still be valuable when there is a high concentration of high-value targets. That strike today was a perfect example of that.”
Preston stared at his phone. “These images of dead children tell a different story.”
Blunt rolled his eyes. “They probably found a few kids on the mountainside and killed them and staged their bodies there for a nice propaganda photo opp.”
“Regardless, you know you’re going to catch a lot of flack for this.”
“I’ll happily catch any amount of flack from anyone as long as the end result is weeding out these terrorists.”
“But isn’t that what Brady Hawk is for, to make sure these things don’t have to happen?”
Blunt glared at him. “Brady Hawk is for whatever I want him to do. He knew what he was getting himself into. He’ll be fine. And if he isn’t—well, that’s just part of the job.” He paused. “By the way, why haven’t we heard from him yet?”
CHAPTER 10
ALEX NEEDED SOMETHING STRONGER than breakfast comfort food from The Golden Egg—something much stronger. She hadn’t spoken with Hawk since he went dark in the Zagros Mountains. And she couldn’t get Blunt to answer her calls after she received a message from a former colleague that some drones targeted a location in western Iraq. She didn’t really need confirmation. After working with Blunt for just a short while, she knew he’d bombed those coordinates she’d given him as sure as she was alive. And she hated herself for ever passing them along—even if it was her job.
But at that moment, her primary concern was finding out who Gordon Jefferson was.
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